The Drama of Scripture
"we find ourselves in a world that, despite all the power of sin, is led to restoration and perfection. Israel is the preparation, Christ the center, the church the consequence, and the parousia the crown --- that is the cord that binds the facts of revelation together." --Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics [Gereformeerde dogmatiek, 1896], Translated by John Vriend, edited by John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), p. 376.
This expansion of the "redemption" part of the common "creation-fall-redemption" theme of the Reformed worldview gives it the character of a six-act drama: creation - fall - Israel - Jesus - church - consummation. (At a Regent public lecture in May 2007, Marva Dawn further divided "church" into two acts, with the early church and us as acts five and six of a seven-act play.) This six-act drama is explicated in Goheen & Bartholomew, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Story of the Bible (Baker, 2004); see Goheen's lecture "Reading the Bible as One Story" for a good overview, including a brief connection with Tom Wright's five-act drama. Our task is to fill out the unfinished act of this drama by being familiar with the already revealed acts.
This expansion of the "redemption" part of the common "creation-fall-redemption" theme of the Reformed worldview gives it the character of a six-act drama: creation - fall - Israel - Jesus - church - consummation. (At a Regent public lecture in May 2007, Marva Dawn further divided "church" into two acts, with the early church and us as acts five and six of a seven-act play.) This six-act drama is explicated in Goheen & Bartholomew, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Story of the Bible (Baker, 2004); see Goheen's lecture "Reading the Bible as One Story" for a good overview, including a brief connection with Tom Wright's five-act drama. Our task is to fill out the unfinished act of this drama by being familiar with the already revealed acts.
posted by Valerie or Arnold Sikkema at 11:59 a.m.
2 Comments:
I just read Goheen & Bartholomew, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Story of the Bible (Baker, 2004); and Goheen's "Reading the Bible as One Story" as part of a course I'm attending by Rev. Agema on teaching Bible History from a redemptive historical perspective. Somewhat intriguing that you are also reading this material at this time. Jaclyn
I learned about the redemptive historical approach while we were attending a PCA in Florida in ten years ago, when Bill Dennison of Covenant College extolled the virtues of deGraaf's Promise and Deliverance --- which, interestingly, was always on my parents' bookshelf. Sometimes it takes "going outside" (although it actually wasn't outside - we only thought it was) to appreciate the treasures you have.
Post a Comment
<< Home